I was able to get the original Canon 5D, not the 5D Mark II, to tether and have full functionality under the EOS Utility program. I hope this is helpful to other 5D owners in similar circumstances.

You will need Windows 7 64-bit Professional or greater to do this. Apparently the Home versions don’t support XP Mode.

Step 1:
You must install Windows XP Mode under Windows 7 64-bit. There are several steps that must be completed and your computer must be able to handle hardware virtualization. All the steps are outlined on this Microsoft Windows XP Mode page. Here are some helpful notes.

In step 2, make sure you are running Internet Explorer. This step requires an ActiveX plugin to be installed and it won’t work with other browsers (thanks Microsoft). Make sure you Run the program, and make sure you let it install on the web page or it won’t work. Check the flashing banner at the top of the page during install.

The tool checks to make sure your hardware can support hardware virtualization. Mine did, but it was disabled in the BIOS. You might have to reboot and change your BIOS settings to enable the appropriate setting. Once you do that you have to go back to the page and make sure the tool verifies that you have it turned on.

In step 4, the Windows XP Mode download is 500 MB so make sure you have some time to wait.

Follow the instructions at the bottom of the screen for running the two downloads to install the program.

Step 2:
Run Windows XP Mode from the Start menu. You will be presented with a window that looks and behaves just like you were running Windows XP.

There are some interesting things to note. Your “C:” drive under Windows XP Mode is not the same “C:” drive that has Windows 7 on it. The XP Mode “C:” drive is a virtual drive also. You will have access to the files on your physical “C:” drive through links in Explorer. EOS Utility has a problem with them though, so read on.

Step 3:
Install the EOS Utility. I found even the latest version runs fine and controls my camera. You have to do this in the XP Mode window of course. Open an explorer window and navigate to the install program. Run it normally.

Step 4:
Download the Windows XP WIA driver for the Canon 5D from the Canon website. Make sure to select Windows XP from the Operating System dropdown at the top of the “Drivers and Downloads” tab or you won’t see the WIA57ML.EXE file.

Once downloaded, double-click on the executable using Windows Explorer. The executable only extracts the files and they should end up in a sub-directory called “EOS 5D_R”.

Step 5:

Important: Make sue the “EOS 5D_R” directory is stored on the the XP Mode C: drive. If you try and run the Setup program from your physical drive, you will get an error during install.

Run the Setup program in the “EOS 5D_R” directory and click through the dialogs until setup is complete.

Step 6:
Connect your 5D to your computer with the USB cable and turn on the camera. If Windows 7 wants to install a driver for the camera, just ignore it.

From the top of the XP Mode window select the USB menu and then “Canon Digital Camera”.

XP Mode will find the drivers from in Step 5 and install them for use with the camera. Windows should now ask you what program you want to run when the camera is connected. Select the EOS Utility and you should be up and running.

Using EOS Utility in XP Mode:
You have to start full XP Mode so that you have access to the USB menu when you connect the camera. Each time you turn on the camera you have to connect the camera using the menu.

When using EOS Utility to capture images from the camera you will get a “Disk Full” error if you try to save the files to your physical drive. Which means when capturing images you have to save them to the virtual C: drive. This works fine, but you have to copy the files using Windows Explorer to the physical drive before you close out of XP Mode or you won’t have access to them.

For myself, I like to use the Auto Import feature of Lightroom 2, but I can’t do that when the files are saved to the virtual C: drive in XP mode. I will be looking into utilities that will automatically copy files from the XP Mode C: drive to my physical drive so that Lightroom can import them automatically.

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